I have been playing around and reading on that site for about an hour now. Amazing, though mind-boggling, stuff. Going to go read some Heinlein to veg out after that.I just came back from here and let me tell you, my head is spinning...
Short story is that yes, it was used to push debris and whatnot out of the way. I assume the computer is used to avoid steering into a planet or sun though, since pushing one of those out of the way would have some unintended side effects.